Kennedy Center Head Insists He Instigated Split With Washington Opera

In a press release in all probability anybody might have seen coming, Richard Grenell, the controversial president of Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, spoke out to say that it was the group’s management that determined to end ties with the Washington National Opera, not the other manner round.

Grenell’s tweets on the topic Saturday adopted by a day the opera company’s announcement Friday that it will be taking its programming elsewhere. Opera leaders had said that it was an amicable break up, and made no point out of the political turmoil inflicting many artists to cancel their Kennedy Center engagements, leaving few “name” acts on the constructing’s 2026 calendar.

“We have spent millions of dollars to support the Washington Opera’s exclusivity, and yet they were still millions of dollars in the hole — and getting worse,” Grenell wrote in a prolonged assertion on X. “Having an exclusive Opera was just not financially smart. And our patrons clearly wanted a refresh,” the Trump-appointed president added.

His assertions that the WNO had operated in the gap for years stood in distinction to earlier statements given by opera management that ticket sales had declined from a regular 80-90% of capability to 60% since the Trump administration successfully took over the heart last February.

Grenell also claimed that his X account had been hacked after he first posted his facet of the story. “I have alerted @X that someone hacked my account last night — and deleted my content on our Opera announcement and media corrections. X will find the hacker and deal with him/her… The Left continues to try and silence people they don’t agree with – but they will never succeed.”

Having apparently regained management of his X account Saturday, Grenell used it to specific anger with media retailers that had reported on Friday that it was the Washington National Opera that wished to maneuver out. He ship out a response to the New York Times’ Peter Baker, who had tweeted a hyperlink to his coverage together with the message: “The storied Washington National Opera decides to leave the Kennedy Center where it has played since 1971, perhaps the most significant artistic rebuke yet to Trump’s campaign to remake the facility in his image and attach his name to it.”

Responded Grenell on Saturday: “You never do journalism, Peter. You always do partisan attacks on Republicans. You don’t have enough integrity to correct your tweet. So here’s a snippet from the Opera Board Chair noting who asked for the separation first.” He then hooked up a display shot of what seemed to be a personal communication with the opera management, which read: “We have, since November 8th, at Ambassador Grenell’s invitation, been seeking to have meaningful discussion toward how we can amicably bring forward the termination of the Affiliation Agreement. This was endorsed by both our EC on November 10th and Board on December 11th…”

Center spokesperson Roma Davari also tweeted a press release saying it was their determination to end the 45-year-old relationship with the opera company. “When financial commitments are not met year over year, we have to make tough decisions for the financial health of the Trump Kennedy Center,” she tweeted. “Given the longstanding financial strain, it has become necessary for us to part ways to protect the best interests of the Center.”

Whichever celebration prompted the coming severance of the relationship, each the heart and the opera board appear to be in favor of it, and to acknowledge the relationship has not been lately financially profitable. Some supporters of the opera have put that all the way down to many of its patrons being reluctant to assist the heart since Trump took it over at the starting of his second time period, although Grenell went to pains in some of his tweets to contend that the relationship was unprofitable going again years.

Grenell wrote, “Fact: The exclusive Opera contract cost the Trump Kennedy Center $64 million over the last 10 years — with their expenses being double their revenues. We were very pleased that the current Opera leadership was so willing to end their exclusivity. Patrons win: Greater variety.”

Concerning more latest monetary particulars, Grenell tweeted that “the Washington Opera finished FY 2025 with a $7.2 million deficit, not accounting for the $5.8 million additional expenses we gave them. Additionally, Washington Opera ticket sales in 2024 comprised only 4% of total revenue across the Center – making the Opera 8% of combined revenue, but 16% of combined expenses for us.”

In an interview with the Guardian in November, the WNO’s director, Francesca Zambello, said there had been a 40% drop in ticket sales since Trump put in himself as of the Kennedy Center and spoke of “shattered” donor confidence. She said at the time, “People send me back their the season brochure shredded in an envelope and say: ‘Never, never, will I return: while he’s in power.’” She said in that interview that performances by the opera had run at 80-90% of capability before the political takeover at the starting of 2025, and since had been decreased to 60%.

It could or is probably not coincidental that the screenshot Grenell posted suggesting that he had proposed the breakup dated that as having occurred in November, the same month that Zambello did the interview overtly discussing the marked drop in ticket sales since what the Guardian called a “Trump coup.”

Although engagements have been canceled as a consequence of the political firestorm and reporting has indicated low attendance for many of the applications happening — with an October report in the Washington Post bearing the headline “Kennedy Center ticket sales have plummeted since Trump takeover” — Grenell’s tweets on Saturday claimed that the heart just loved “a record-breaking fundraising year.”

It’s not clear whether or not the Washington National Opera will continue to have its spring season happen at the Kennedy Center or whether or not its management is hoping to relocate some or all of those occasions.

Among the applications on the opera calendar is an upcoming gala event which songwriter Stephen Schwartz was listed as the host and curator for, until he announced that he had no plans to set foot in the constructing again. The gala is now listed without a bunch or superstar hooked up.

The opera company’s assertion Friday said that it will “seek an amicable early termination of its affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center and resume operations as a fully independent nonprofit entity.” According to the New York Times report that Grenell discovered objectionable, “Opera officials said that new sites in Washington have been lined up but that no leases have been signed.”

The opera has carried out nearly completely at the heart since it opened in 1971.

Under Grenell’s management, the board lately voted to rename the heart the Trump Kennedy Center, with lettering with the current president’s title added to the exterior of the constructing the next day. Opponents of the transfer have pointed out that, legally, it will require an act of Congress to rename a national monument, so dispute continues over what the current title of the venue truly is.

Grenell was not solely involved with the Washington National Opera or his hacked account on Saturday, also devoting tweets to how California governor Gavin Newsom “is running the largest state in the country into the ground,” celebrating the halt to public media funding, and approvingly reposting video of a person being captured by ICE in Los Angeles.